For the amount of money that we pay for long haul Club World, is it so difficult for BA to carry enough dessert and cheese for everyone?

Sadly it seems to be.

It saddens me to read this. Cheese should not be in lieu of dessert!

Just landed on 287 from LHR to SFO. They ran out of starters by row 5 of the upper deck, desserts right before us. Either catering is really bad or crew didn't even check beyond their cart.

Ovedall one of the worst flights in CW - crew lacked training, made a lot of noise and talked loudly entire flight. Then add the lack of food options and running out early. Sigh ... just more to look forward to in 2017.

+1 just came off LHR-YVR. Upper deck, only 5 mushroom starters loaded. Remainder had salmon. Service took ages to start also, seemed out of place for a presumably experienced crew.

my last BA long haul of 2016 was in late November as I took a 'holiday of ba' in December. It was in F and they had neither yoghurt left nor my choice of main for breakfast, the (always ghastly) fruit plate instead of yoghurt would not have been worth waking up for if I had known. I was in row 1 but crew decided to take orders from back for whatever reason. Didn't bother complaining as it never gets anywhere these days.

management have explicitly mentioned their priority is to reduce waste so I personally expect under catering to become worse rather than better.

I don't quite see how things like yoghurts, that have perhaps 2-4 weeks before the use by date, can run out. They're not something that has to be ditched that day if not used.

Is there a long game for reductions in food?
You get nothing on the plane so have to eat in the lounge.
More people eat in the lounge which puts more strain on the caterer's budget so they have to make cuts and reduce the quality of offerings.
More people dislike the lounge food and eat outside the lounges.
Less people using the lounges means BA doesn't need them as much or can reduce costs.

It's not difficult, it just costs more, and has thus been an easy target for management cost cutting.

BA is promising a significant investment, and hopefully improvement, in CW catering, as part of the effort to catch up the product to the competition. Perhaps that will include the option of both cheese and dessert.

To be fair, you can't break the cold chain for foods, particularly dairy. Taking the yoghurt out of the galley and putting it back in gives no guarantee that it has been kept at the right temperature ready for putting back into the catering facility for a future flight.

Indeed that is correct. Pretty much the entire Club Kitchen, and certainly all dairy products, are thrown away at the end of every flight.

But just to reiterate, this is well below a 1% issue, judging from what I've seen and the experience of CIHY. Not so good if you're in that group of affected passengers, but I'm wondering if there was some event that caused it, such as a last minute addition of passengers from another flight or some such.

Steady on now ......

(We're not made of money you know)

I'm going for embroidered table cloths and/or glasses with a logo on them rather than a food offering.

Which translates as marketing-speak for "the priority is to reduce costs", which is what you expect from a company run by bean-counters.

Seriously, if BA still thinks they are an world class premium airline, then they should put reasonable efforts to treat well enough premium customers. I could understand that an airline can run out of one main dish option in economy, on a long haul flight. But for premium cabins, I have trouble to understand how come they cannot offer both cheese and dessert. Cheese is not a dessert. it's like if you say that champagne and cola are the same (yes they both have bubbles and are liquids you can potentially drink but the comparison stops here). This just gives a "cheap feeling" to a business class already behind competition (and I mean European competitors, not even GCC or Asian carriers...)
I assume these situations are also sometimes complicated and frustrating to handle for the crew. The last few cabin crews I spoke with were not that proud anymore to work for BA...
I used to enjoy a lot flying with BA several years back despite the mess which is a transit in LHR. I haven't flown BA long haul for a year or so now, and my next flight with them will be a very long one (SCL-LHR, in J). Not sure what to expect anymore. Should I get a sandwich at the airport before the 15hr flight ?

Let me stop you right there, I don't think BA are delusional at all on that point. It's one of the strange things about FT: you'll find people willing to make that case here, but in fairness, none of the BA people that I have talked to (and there have been a few) have - nor I'd think would have - made that claim.